Overlord - Prologue

The man sighed deeply, and looked at the ceiling with dull, expressionless eyes. Then, he turned a keen gaze on the calendar.

“Ah, it’s still a long way off…”

It was still the middle of the week. His next rest day seemed unbearably distant.

“Ah—. Ah—. Ah—. Ah—.”

As Suzuki Satoru mused on the number of days remaining, he ended up making a bunch of strangely modulated, and ultimately unintelligible noises with his mouth. After that — as though his batteries had run out — the noises stopped.

Then, a smile dawned on his face.

“Ah well, forget it.”

Indeed. As long as he thought of what would soon come, even pain like that could be forgotten.

Suzuki Satoru picked up his dinner, which he had just laid on the table.

He inserted the straw into the steak-flavored liquid food, and sucked it up.

It was little more than a sticky, meat-flavored gel. The truth was that it was awful, but he strongly felt that the pursuit of perfection in food was pointless. After all, it all became shit in the end, so investing money in it was pointless. The important thing was filling one’s stomach, and if it was not nutritious enough, there were always pills for that.

After that, Suzuki Satoru gulped down several multivitamin and supplement pills with a mouthful of health drink.

That was the end of his 220 yen dinner. He usually ate lunch outside, which was more expensive than the most economical meal he could get, so he had to save money on his breakfast and dinner.

After replenishing his nutrients, Suzuki Satoru finally began acting like a human being.

Unlike the clumsy fumbling when he first came home, his eyes were bright and his movements were nimble.

He picked up a black power cable, which was connected to a wall outlet.

Suzuki Satoru removed the protective plastic covering on one end of the plug, revealing a plug that was roughly three centimeters across. A silver gleam blended with the liquid glittering of the slippery protective fluid.

He held the cable in one hand and lifted up the hair on the back of his neck with the other. The subdued glint there came from the man-made object embedded in the nape of his neck.

With practiced ease, he opened the roughly-three-centimeter cover on the back of his neck. The sliding motion exposed the socket hidden beneath it.

He pressed the plug home, without any hesitation.

“Ohh…”

In time with his quiet sigh, he could feel light moving through his body, as though his blood vessels were filled with radiance.

The room had not changed, but his field of vision was different now.

Several windows popped up within his line of sight, showing him the information flowing into the processor within his brain.

He began operating the CPU.

Someone from an earlier age might look askance at the strange gestures he was performing in empty space. However, his cranial CPU read the weak electrical impulses of his synapses — in other words, it was thought-controlled — and converted it into data.

His thoughts reached his supercomputer through the medium of the cable, and turned on the television. The power came on, and a screen appeared in the black frame.

Within it, a primly-dressed Japanese female began reading the news.

“—The conflict that started last year between the 2nd European Arcology and the 3rd European Arcology—”

He manipulated an invisible console and changed the channel.

“—Regarding the three mega corporations in the capital, Neo Kyoto—”

He changed the channel again.

“—Arrested for the sale of illegal cyberware in Neo Kyoto Hachijo—”

The screen flickered rapidly between several channels, but the news he was hoping to see did not appear. Suzuki Satoru moved his hand, and turned off the TV.

“Then — let’s begin.”

He picked up the helmet that almost covered his entire head as mandated by the computer laws, connected another wire to his neck and linked it to the helmet, then put it over his head.

Although it was supposed to be a full-face helmet, the camera mounted on the outside would transmit its video signal directly to the brain, so his field of vision was still clear.

This helmet included a system that would automatically record everything which went on in the virtual world. As an aside, it would retain footage for a month, automatically deleting it after that.

A lot of people wanted to avoid wearing this helmet. It was only natural, since putting it on was something like giving up one’s privacy.

Yet, almost everyone wore these helmets.

It was not just because of the law.

It was because it protected people.

The neural nano-interface was a human brain augmentation which allowed it to function as a supercomputer — a super high-performance personal computer. It was essential for daily life, but sometimes they were used in crimes as well.

In particular, hackers would use the brains of others as a springboard to commit crimes.